By John F. Di Leo -
Reflections on the willful misinterpretation of an epidemic…
For over a year now, there has been a growing crisis – yes, a crisis, from the perspective of both the business and sport of football – in the National Football League. Football players, men paid hundreds of thousands - even millions - of dollars per year, just to play 16 games a year in the most generous country on earth, are refusing to stand for the National Anthem at the beginning of televised games.
And there are nice, sweet, well-intentioned people out there, trying desperately to concoct a way to respect these football players anyway… to make excuses for them, not just to forgive them, but to refuse to be offended, and to tell the rest of us not to be offended either.
The Leftist talking points are to say that we shouldn't think of it as an insult to the country; they claim that it's just a way of showing that they care about race relations, or that they're opposed to the miniscule amount of dirty cops there are, or that they "support the black community" (whatever that means), etc.
The problem is, if you want to do that, there is a direct way to do so. You can just happily and proudly wait until the end of the game, when you're off the clock, and say "I believe in a color-blind America!" or "I support honest law enforcement!" or “Black, White, Asian or Latino, God Bless All Americans!"
You could even put a bumper sticker to that effect on your Bentley or your Escalade.
There are a million ways to make these statements.
And since football players are celebrities, interviewed constantly by a fawning public, they have plenty of opportunities to say whatever they want. Nobody gets microphones shoved in their faces more often and with less justification than football players.
Sports reporters struggle for years to think up questions to ask for how they played the game, why they won, why they lost, what they plan to do next time…. And football players struggle to think of new and different answers to such questions so that every single such interview isn’t completely identical.
The public would be happy to see their players say something positive, such as “Before we get into that, let me just say how proud I am to be employed in a sport in which all the players are equal – black, white, Asian and Latino, our teams work together for the win - and I dream of the day when everyone on earth has that same attitude!”
They’d be welcome to say something like that in every interview… if that really, truly were the point they’re trying to make.
But it’s not.
The fact is, no matter how desperately you WANT to make yourself and others believe that these overpaid ingrates players are really saying these honorable things... they are not.
The fact is, what they are doing is refusing to stand for the National Anthem. Period.
That’s all there is to it.
They are intentionally, willfully, angrily, hitting the ground during the National Anthem, in a visible, unmistakable insult to the United States of America.
That's what it means. That's ALL it can mean. And refusing to stand for the Anthem equals insulting the United States and its people.
I am reminded of a time, long ago, when my mother (whose degrees from Mundelein and Loyola were in English and Literature) volunteered to help our local school, Evanston Township High School, with grading papers (yes, they recruited parents to help with such tasks in those days). As she went through the essays submitted by these kids, over 45 years ago now, she saw some that were filled to the brim with four-letter words (and as she often reminded me, “even these were usually misspelled!”), and naturally marked such disasters with an “F.”
The teachers would say “No, don’t mark them off for that; they’re coming out of their shell, or they’re angry, or they’re troubled, or they’re sad"... anything to make an excuse for people intentionally being offensive, intentionally insulting the process, intentionally pushing the boundaries to show the world that they can get away with being as rude as they want.
Just as this rude subset of students (both black and white, Mom reminded me as she told the tale) were being rude on purpose, and their bleeding-heart liberal teachers made excuses for them then, the same dynamic is occurring today.
Football players have chosen the rudest possible way to offend their country. They’ve chosen it on purpose. And they are hijacking a nonpolitical event - a football game - to do it.
No matter how much one may want to forgive them, it can’t be done. Our nationhood – that is, the definition of what America stands for, what America means – is under assault today like never before, not just from without, but from within.
Our Founding Fathers risked their lives, their property, and their sacred honor to rebel against tyranny, in order that we may have a free nation today, a nation in which people can rise from abject poverty to become a senator or cabinet secretary, a corporate executive or inventor, or a football or baseball player with sports cars and mansions.
These people don’t have to work a 9-to-5 job, or even multiple jobs, to pay their bills. They are rewarded with great wealth – the kind of wealth that clerks and cashiers and assembly line workers can only dream of – just for playing a game on TV.
...And this subset of them isn’t even grateful. We pay them millions to have a chip on their shoulders.
The practice of refusing to stand for the National Anthem is not a small matter; it’s a very big one; because it is a conscious, driven effort to spread anti-patriotism across the country.
This is an effort to recruit the world of football fans into the far Left's hatred of the United States and of the principles of liberty that our country stands for. It is thoroughly and aggressively malicious in every way.
And the many people making excuses for them are guilty of providing the shovels with which these players are trying to dig a grave for the greatest country in human history.
Let us pray that America survives, and that all these ingrates succeed in destroying is their own unappreciated meal ticket.
Copyright 2017 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer, writer and actor. His columns regularly appear in Illinois Review. Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included.
